Why Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Was Always a Pipe Dream

Remember how something called "criminal justice reform" was going to be the thing that saved bipartisan government from being torn apart by the wild beasts of the two parties and their respective bases? Remember how even Grover Norquist, drowner of governments, was on board? Conservatives were going to abandon the (badonk-donk) law and order rhetoric that had served them so well for the previous five decades and come to Jesus on things like mandatory minimums and the eternally stupid "war" on drugs, while liberals were going to overcome their distrust of conservatives in order to do the right thing for people the rest of society had deemed to be its dregs. Compassionate conservatism meets bleeding-heart liberalism, and they have a baby called common fcking sense.

GOP tensions over a bill that would effectively loosen some mandatory minimum sentences spilled over during a party lunch last week, when Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the outspoken Senate freshman, lobbied his colleagues heavily against the legislation, according to people familiar with the closed-door conversation. The measure passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall with bipartisan support. "It would be very dangerous and unwise to proceed with the Senate Judiciary bill, which would lead to the release of thousands of violent felons," Cotton said later in an interview with POLITICO. "I think it's no surprise that Republicans are divided on this question … [but] I don't think any Republicans want legislation that is going to let out violent felons, which this bill would do."

Ah, the call of the bobble-throated Arkansas warbler, heretofore famous for creating its own foreign policy with regard to Iran. With Ted Cruz busy out there wooing the rubes away from He, Trump, the Senate had an opening for an obstructionist pain in the ass, and Tom Cotton's resume always is at the top of the pile when that position comes open. Not that Cotton is alone in his efforts to make sure that the Republican Party's marriage to the remnants of the old Wallace campaigns remains inviolable.

Cotton isn't alone. Other Senate Republicans, including Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and David Perdue of Georgia, also registered their strong opposition during the lunch, even as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vigorously defended the bill, which he helped negotiate. Risch stressed this message, according to one Republican source: Shouldn't the GOP be a party of law and order?

(There also seems to be a joker in the deck of the bipartisan effort. It seems that the brothers Koch have in mind the kind of criminal justice reform that basically would reform the criminalswith whom they are most familiar. Trust, as someone once said, but verify.)

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There are backbenchers and then there are guys whose benches are out along Constitution Avenue somewhere. That would be Risch and Perdue. But Cotton is a different bit of business. Coddled and groomed from his political birth by the worst elements of corporate conservatism, he's a man with his eyes on the prize. (2020, if I had to guess. No later than 2024.) And nobody between then and now is going to get around to his right. He'd let the party fall off the starboard side of the world before he'd let that happen.

Bear in mind. I don't doubt the sincerity even of Mike Lee, the konztitooshunal skolar from Utah, on this particular issue. I don't think he has been legislating in bad faith at all. It's just that the prion disease has taken hold so deeply in his party that even its glancing attempts at decent public policy are inevitably undermined by the darker impulses of the Republican Id, the ones that have proven to be so politically beneficial for a very long time. Tom Cotton is the kind of politician those impulses produce, and their power remains undeniable.

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